The US in the throes of the Algerian Syndrome....
As Branche argues, it was these men who directed the war in Algeria: "C'est moins la loi qui dicte la guerre, que la guerre qui dicte la loi." ("It was less a case of the law dictating the war than of the war dictating the law."). French soldiers dutifully carried out their grim tasks. If they had any hesitation, these were soon swept aside by sight of fellow soldiers whose throats had been slit, their mouths stuffed with their testicles.
Hardily a decade after the defeat of fascism, the French established a system of repression, which included concentration camps like the infamous "Ferme Ameziane," through which over a hundred thousand Algerians passed. During the Battle of Algiers alone, over 3,000 suspects in Algiers police custody "disappeared." Throughout this period, France retained the outward trappings of democracy, even as democratic procedures were eaten away by the "gangrène" of torture. As Sylvie Thenault shows in her study French magistrates during the war, Une Drôle de Justice, this shadow government was erected on a foundation of lies and deception, and kept in place by questioning the loyalty of those who raised any questions about it. Algeria's magistrates "played the they were asked to play" --permit ratissages, murderous sweeps through Arab neighborhoods, and approving executions of Algerian prisoners.
When the law imposed restrictions on the army, the army defied the law. In April 1955, for example, the army opened four concentration camps in flagrant violation of a ban passed by the French legislature that same month. Moderates in the judicial system tried to fight the steady erosion of legality, but their efforts were consistently undermined. Thenault has an excellent chapter on Jean Reliquet, Algeria's Procurer General during the Battle of Algiers. Like his peers, Reliquet did not want to lose Algeria, but torture disturbed him, and he thought it counterproductive. At a meeting attended by the Resident Minister Robert Lacoste in April 1957, he proposed shutting down torture centers like the Villa Sesini. Lacoste not only rejected the idea; he accused Reliquet of secretly conspiring with the FLN.
Was torture effective? As Branche and Thenault both acknowledge, torture enabled the French to gather information about future terrorist strikes and to destroy the infrastructure of terror in Algiers. General Aussaresses is not wrong to claim that he won the "battle of the Casbah" precisely by abandoning any pretense of legal norms in dealing with the FLN. But to present the battle as a triumph of counterinsurgency betrays a remarkable lack of historical perspective. Torture not only failed to repress the yearnings for independence among Algerians; it increased popular support for the FLN, contributing to the transformation of a small vanguard into a revolutionary party with mass support, and rendering impossible the emergence of the interlocuteur valable with which the French government claimed to be seeking a dialogue. Indeed. France's tactics helped the FLN to win over Algerian moderates like Ferhat Abbas, who became the president of the FLN 's government-in-exile. If torture inspires widespread condemnation in France today, as it did not during the war, it's partly because one can no longer defend it as an unfortunate necessity. France's defeat made a mockery of that argument. A scathing cartoon of Aussaresses in Charlie Hebdo, the French humor magazine, may have put it best: "Yes, torture was necessary!" Aussaresses exclaims. "Without it, we would have lost Algeria."
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